Raskally fellows: Are copyright infringers "pirates" and "thieves"?

Yep, semantics. Whatever word you use, it's still illegal. If you don't want it to be illegal, fair enough. Just don't expect sophomoric debates about vocabulary are going to carry any weight.

Murder, manslaughter and assault are all illegal too but it wouldn't be appropriate to use the same term to describe all these offences. The term used conjures up an idea of the severity of the offence and the level of punishment that is appropriate. It's not a coincidence that theft is such a widely used term to describe copyright infringement, and that the consequences for infringement are disproportionate to the level of harm induced by an individual infringement. Semantics matter.

Filesharing is not piracy. Filesharing does not infringe on any copyright. The rights holders have their rights unaffected. Filesharing is in the DNA of the computer network and it represents fair use of the Internet.

And if that exclusive distribution right makes me a lawbreaker for giving a copy of my music collection to my children, sister or brother, enforcing said exclusive right must necessarily trump my right to privacy and free expression.

On what grounds is a right to privacy and/or free expression ever a defense to anything. Any charge of

It's not a "defense". It is simply more important.

It's simply a matter of Law & Order.

The 1st and 5th amendments (and the others) aren't simply good ideas. They are the law.

So if I shout "fire" in a crowded theatre, I can simply claim freedom of expression? If I ask you to kill my wife, I can claim freedom of expression? Rights have limits, and free expression doesn't protect you giving a copy of a cd to your sister any more than it protects you from pressing a million copies and hawking them on a street corner. Your right to privacy might help you not get caught, but doesn't protect you from punishment if you are caught.

I hate the way I can be sued by someone copying my original code, just because they can afford to patent it and litigate. Open Source licences shouldn't be necessary here. I invented it, I deserve some credit even if I give it away to the world altruistically... without reams of GPL guff attached to it.

Prove you did it first; prior art invalidates patents. That's not to say that software patents are legal, though (they're not).

Boskone wrote:

DragonTHC wrote:

If the company who produces the work doesn't value it appropriately to the market, should there be laws protecting their ability to overprice their products and prohibiting any competition in distribution?

There's some fallacious logic with your statement. In the market, barring supply limitations, free will _always_ win, regardless of the value of the work.

I would agree with an argument in favor of less artificial pricing and availability (e.g. not releasing DVDs until 6-12 months after the movie comes out), but that's a far sight from "if it's being pirated, it's because it's economic worth is actually zero".

Your argument has been debunked by numerous studies, as well as the presence and success of Amazon, iTunes, etc.

Maltz wrote:

musicliberty wrote:

The starting point for any honest debate is what is a copyright infringer?

According to the copyright maximalist interpretation of the law I am a copyright infringer if I copy my neighbor's music collection.

It leaves us with the fascinating possibility that millions everyday infringe copyright, and either are ignorant or don't care.

Actually, that violates copyright by almost any definition in any century. You're also infringing when you record a song off the radio. Of course, until relatively recently, there was no way to track such activity, so the media companies didn't freak out about it.

Also, there is a media tax added to blank cassette and blank "audio" CDs. (FYI, that is the ONLY difference between such "audio" CD's and normal blank "data" CDs, btw.) So it was assumed that you were using blank media to pirate material and you were charged accordingly. But now, there is no way for them to get that pirate tax.

The internet and the high quality of home studio equipment today is also eroding their purpose as a middle-man between musicians and fans. The comparison to buggy whip makers is apt, except this time around, the government is going to ridiculous lengths to help the buggy whip makers hang in there.

Actually, they _did_ freak out. They've freaked out over every single technology that would allow any type of recording or reproduction, of any quality level, ever brought to market.

As to the blank media tax, not all countries have that, and I don't believe the US does. Such a tax, on its face, would likely be illegal in the US, for the simple fact that it's automatic presumption of guilt: "if you buy blank media, the only possible reason is for copyright infringement, ergo you will be taxed at the time of purchase and this money given to content DISTRIBUTORS (not creators, look at any country with this tax, it's the MAFIAA that gets the money, not artists) to cover the losses from you stealing."

JEDIDIAH wrote:

crhilton wrote:

Uncompetative wrote:

I hate the way I can be sued by someone copying my original code, just because they can afford to patent it and litigate. Open Source licences shouldn't be necessary here. I invented it, I deserve some credit even if I give it away to the world altruistically... without reams of GPL guff attached to it.

Sounds like a job for the MIT license?

Or you could just publish it in some peer reviewed technical journal. Or you could just skip the peer review part. You could even just release the code in the public domain.

Either way, you have to make it public. Otherwise, you can't point to it as prior art. No amount of whining about the GPL will change that.

That's not true. Prior art can invalidate a patent, so long as it can be proved PRIOR art. That doesn't mean you can stop them from producing their product, only that they can't claim patent rights on it. There is precedent for inventors putting their plans and schematics in an envelope and mailing it to themselves, then keeping it sealed. This puts an official date stamp on it, in a sealed container, thus proving the "when," and thus allowing the item's use as prior art.

Excellent article, which brings me to an observation over the last 12+ years from the heyday of Napster until now:

Some time before 2001, the RIAA put forth the term 'pirate' as "ooo, evil", blah blah blah. The results were that pirate, as a term, has become popularized and 'cool'.

Around this same time, the RIAA and MPAA started to use the term 'theft' because of their failure to extol the evils of 'piracy' to the masses. Thus the term 'theft' has become common place in place of 'piracy' in an attempt to sway the masses from seeing 'piracy' as cool or no big deal.

I'd personally say at least a plurality of people, however, are smart enough to see that copying something, unauthorized or not, is not theft in the same category as say shoplifting.

And to continue my diatribe, shop lifting not only denies a shop owner a sale, but the vast majority of the time, costs them real money as they had to pay for the item initially and possibly pay to replace it. It costs the MPAA/RIAA, etc., virtually nothing to produce a copy of a work (and truly nothing in the case of a purely digital work) - ergo the "loss" to it being copied is also virtually nothing. Except in their minds.

So if I shout "fire" in a crowded theatre, I can simply claim freedom of expression? If I ask you to kill my wife, I can claim freedom of expression? Rights have limits, and free expression doesn't protect you giving a copy of a cd to your sister any more than it protects you from pressing a million copies and hawking them on a street corner. Your right to privacy might help you not get caught, but doesn't protect you from punishment if you are caught.

Yep, semantics. Whatever word you use, it's still illegal. If you don't want it to be illegal, fair enough. Just don't expect sophomoric debates about vocabulary are going to carry any weight.

Murder, manslaughter and assault are all illegal too but it wouldn't be appropriate to use the same term to describe all these offences. The term used conjures up an idea of the severity of the offence and the level of punishment that is appropriate. It's not a coincidence that theft is such a widely used term to describe copyright infringement, and that the consequences for infringement are disproportionate to the level of harm induced by an individual infringement. Semantics matter.

But nobody argues that assault is okay because it isn't murder. But these threads are always full of comments complaining that it isn't piracy because no boats are involved, and ignoring the fact that whatever you do call it, someone has gained something that they would otherwise have had to pay for or do without.

"I think it's accurate to use the term 'theft,' because if you look at classical definitions of 'theft,' they all incorporate depriving someone of something of value,"

OK, but here is the problem: When I steal something my victim loses the same thing that I obtain, so that both the loss and the gain are of the same value. When I copy something, in contrast, my "victim" may (or may not) lose something, but that which they lose is in any case of much lesser value that what I obtain. They MAY lose the opportunity to sell me a copy of the thing which I have copied (although even in this case the copyright owner will not have lost the full value which I have obtained, since this would presume that they incurred no costs in producing their product -in which case it is hard to argue that they SHOULD be paid, since they are just rent-seeking). Or they may not lose an opportunity to sell to me, since I might never have been inclined to buy. Or I may in contrast be more inclined to buy a copy (e.g. a higher quality copy, collectors edition, whatever) having sampled it.

In short, sometimes a copyright owner will suffer a loss as a result of copyright infringement, whereas other times they will not, or may even receive a benefit, and in the worst case their loss is outweighed by my gain. This does not sound like "theft" to me.

That settled, now all we need is a term for "design and exploitation of economic systems to create artificial scarcity, so as to maximise perceived value and inflate profits, thus depriving the vast majority of humanity access to knowledge and culture". To be honest, the closest metaphor I can think of for this practice is "theft".

Let me ask you a question: Is it illegal to make a copy of a cd I have bought from Amazon and give it to my brother or sister?

Quote:

Yes.

You're trying to "have your cake and eat it" - i.e. you retain the original CD after the gift to your sibling.

And most of the public don't think that such copying which is technically illegal is wrong. Imagine what would happen if the law was evenhandedly enforced in just 20 % of all cases, and copyright infringement prosecuted as criminal offenses.

Even civil copyright infringement with its statutory damages could hit a family very hard.

If you think it should be illegal, and the public had to choose between keeping private sharing illegal or abolishing copyright, no politician would defend copyright.

If I am a criminal or lawbreaker, so be it, defending copyright law is simply untenable for any politician, if enforced in a few high profile cases against individuals sharing with their families.

And I see nothing wrong in having my cake and eat it. Have I caused the rights holder any loss?

If I copy the cd and give the copy to my sister, I am a lawbreaker, but if I let her borrow the cd, I have likely caused the rights holder the same loss.

If copyright law is so draconian that family sharing could be punishable as criminal copyright infringement, or force a family into bankrupcy, copyright law is dead.

The only reason it hasn't happened yet is that copyright law is underenforced and people at large haven't discovered basic game theory.

I can't resist a historical reference to Gilbert and Sullivan, whose "Pirates of Penzance" was possibly in reference to the copyright struggles they had. At the time the US didn't respect foreign copyrights, so when one of their operettas opened in London, "pirates" would hastily transcribe the libretto, jump on a steamer, make copies on the way to New York, hand out the copies and have a cast read from them on stage, thus getting the first performance and securing the US copyright.

Perhaps G&S is partially responsible for romanticizing pirates, as their Penzancian ones were lovable rather than villainous. Along those lines perhaps we should change take down notices to yield notices, as in "We charge you yield!"

Semantics aside, I think it's a bit of a straw man to be saying that this is a fight between the poor innocent downloaders and the big bad RIAA/MPAA. Those truly suffering are the independents. For some good perspective from musicians' viewpoints, read some of the articles at http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/.

And sorry, but torrentfreak is NOT a legitimate source of information. Just sayin'.

The problem I have is where both he and you dismiss the "pirate" side, him calling them "assholes" and you saying "torrentfreak is NOT a legitimate source of information". That's too simple; there's more nuance to the opponents than you might realize.

My understanding is that the view epitomized by TorrentFreak and The Pirate Bay is that copying bits is a fundamental function of computers, a core part of what makes everything digital so successful, and a property that continues to have a tremendous and critical economic and cultural impact. Restrictions on that basic function are hindrances to human progress in the widest sense. The RIAA/MPAA juggernauts represent the antithesis of this, the status quo from pre-digital times when distribution was physical and costly and easily regulated. The pirates feel that because of the industry lobby money lining the pockets of politicians in order to sustain that outdated system (as seen prominently in SOPA/PIPA), the best course of action is take down the whole industry, independents be damned. The forest needs to burn so it can regrow.

And it will regrow. Music and art and entertainment are a deep part of humanity. People will make it even if the income is a mere trickle; just look at YouTube, where video has seen a revolution. Only the Justin Biebers make a killing, but that doesn't stop millions of other people from posting their songs and movies and how-to guides. But the "independents" who go in expecting to use the giant marketing machine of the major studios don't realize they're entering a poisoned system, where those labels exert control that enriches themselves, not the artists or the art. To the "pirate" side, the industry behemoths need to be slain, so that the YouTubes and BandCamps and Humble Bundles of the digital world can rise up and start adopting longer formats like full-length movies and music artist box sets. Right now that's incredibly difficult, because the bulk of the marketing and distribution talent and infrastructure is tied up in industry cartels.

EDIT: Changed the sentence about "status quo from pre-digital times". Now it's less rhetoric and more factual.

Let me ask you a question: Is it illegal to make a copy of a cd I have bought from Amazon and give it to my brother or sister?

Quote:

Yes.

You're trying to "have your cake and eat it" - i.e. you retain the original CD after the gift to your sibling.

And most of the public don't think that such copying which is technically illegal is wrong. Imagine what would happen if the law was evenhandedly enforced in just 20 % of all cases, and copyright infringement prosecuted as criminal offenses.

Even civil copyright infringement with its statutory damages could hit a family very hard.

If you think it should be illegal, and the public had to choose between keeping private sharing illegal or abolishing copyright, no politician would defend copyright.

If I am a criminal or lawbreaker, so be it, defending copyright law is simply untenable for any politician, if enforced in a few high profile cases against individuals sharing with their families.

And I see nothing wrong in having my cake and eat it. Have I caused the rights holder any loss?

If I copy the cd and give the copy to my sister, I am a lawbreaker, but if I let her borrow the cd, I have likely caused the rights holder the same loss.

If copyright law is so draconian that family sharing could be punishable as criminal copyright infringement, or force a family into bankrupcy, copyright law is dead.

The only reason it hasn't happened yet is that copyright law is underenforced and people at large haven't discovered basic game theory.

Except only commercial infringement is criminal. What you described is civil infringement, which is not a crime, though there are (ridiculous and obscene) fines attached. I'm not sure if you were trying to conflate them maliciously, trying to conflate them to prove a point, or simply inadvertantly conflated them, however. There's an improtant difference between them, however.

Taking something which has value without paying for it when you have no right to do so has always been and always will be theft. Don't mince words. Just because it is digital and easy to copy changes nothing.

Yep, semantics. Whatever word you use, it's still illegal. If you don't want it to be illegal, fair enough. Just don't expect sophomoric debates about vocabulary are going to carry any weight.

Murder, manslaughter and assault are all illegal too but it wouldn't be appropriate to use the same term to describe all these offences. The term used conjures up an idea of the severity of the offence and the level of punishment that is appropriate. It's not a coincidence that theft is such a widely used term to describe copyright infringement, and that the consequences for infringement are disproportionate to the level of harm induced by an individual infringement. Semantics matter.

But nobody argues that assault is okay because it isn't murder. But these threads are always full of comments complaining that it isn't piracy because no boats are involved, and ignoring the fact that whatever you do call it, someone has gained something that they would otherwise have had to pay for or do without.

What determines when someone has gain access to something for which he would had to pay?If the answer is positive law, or it's so merely because the law claims that the IP belongs to the person/corporation X, we could just abolish copyright and get rid of copyright infringement.

After all, copyright infringement can only exist where the law recognizes it as such, and even if the law is on the book, it's worth nothing if it is always ignored by the people, and the authorities don't dare to enforce it consistently against violators.

Physical property on the other hand would exist even absent legal recognition and could be defended against physical intrusion.

But nobody argues that assault is okay because it isn't murder. But these threads are always full of comments complaining that it isn't piracy because no boats are involved, and ignoring the fact that whatever you do call it, someone has gained something that they would otherwise have had to pay for or do without.

Theft is not about gaining something, it's about losing something. We don't penalize people for good fortune - we penalize for imposing bad fortune on someone else.

At best, the content industries could try to argue that some potential sale is lost. But while this might be true in the aggregate, what they are claiming is that the individual pirate would have purchased their product if piracy weren't an option - a claim that can only be verified or refuted by the pirate themselves.

For centuries, the concept of intellectual property revolved around others making a profit from your works. The reason for this was simple: there was no other way to reasonably calculate the loss. Only when money got involved was there verifiable record of what you were denied. This well-understood concept dating back to the days of Gutenberg was upturned in the last two decades.

So it should come as no surprise that people get a little offended when a legal concept that exists only to serve society's interests in innovation is transformed into a weapon against the average consumer to enrich well-connected industries while not serving its principle purpose.

Let me ask you a question: Is it illegal to make a copy of a cd I have bought from Amazon and give it to my brother or sister?

Quote:

Yes.

You're trying to "have your cake and eat it" - i.e. you retain the original CD after the gift to your sibling.

And most of the public don't think that such copying which is technically illegal is wrong. Imagine what would happen if the law was evenhandedly enforced in just 20 % of all cases, and copyright infringement prosecuted as criminal offenses.

Even civil copyright infringement with its statutory damages could hit a family very hard.

If you think it should be illegal, and the public had to choose between keeping private sharing illegal or abolishing copyright, no politician would defend copyright.

If I am a criminal or lawbreaker, so be it, defending copyright law is simply untenable for any politician, if enforced in a few high profile cases against individuals sharing with their families.

And I see nothing wrong in having my cake and eat it. Have I caused the rights holder any loss?

If I copy the cd and give the copy to my sister, I am a lawbreaker, but if I let her borrow the cd, I have likely caused the rights holder the same loss.

If copyright law is so draconian that family sharing could be punishable as criminal copyright infringement, or force a family into bankrupcy, copyright law is dead.

The only reason it hasn't happened yet is that copyright law is underenforced and people at large haven't discovered basic game theory.

Except only commercial infringement is criminal. What you described is civil infringement, which is not a crime, though there are (ridiculous and obscene) fines attached. I'm not sure if you were trying to conflate them maliciously, trying to conflate them to prove a point, or simply inadvertantly conflated them, however. There's an improtant difference between them, however.

Taking something which has value without paying for it when you have no right to do so has always been and always will be theft. Don't mince words. Just because it is digital and easy to copy changes nothing.

GTFO dude. If you want to have an irrational debate on who can be the most ignorant, this isn't the place for it.

The article does a great job at trying not to take sides. I don't agree with a lot of the views expressed here, but that doesn't mean I won't suggest there isn't a compromise offered.

Still, theft includes deprivation and you can't "steal" something that is intangible. "Identity Theft" is a moronic exception. There's a better word for it: fraud.

Yep, semantics. Whatever word you use, it's still illegal. If you don't want it to be illegal, fair enough. Just don't expect sophomoric debates about vocabulary are going to carry any weight.

Murder, manslaughter and assault are all illegal too but it wouldn't be appropriate to use the same term to describe all these offences. The term used conjures up an idea of the severity of the offence and the level of punishment that is appropriate. It's not a coincidence that theft is such a widely used term to describe copyright infringement, and that the consequences for infringement are disproportionate to the level of harm induced by an individual infringement. Semantics matter.

But nobody argues that assault is okay because it isn't murder. But these threads are always full of comments complaining that it isn't piracy because no boats are involved, and ignoring the fact that whatever you do call it, someone has gained something that they would otherwise have had to pay for or do without.

No ones labelling assault as murder either. If people were labelling assault as murder you'd certainly see similar lines of defence. They can only use that defence because theft is a term that improperly describes the offence committed (in the views of many).

I don't really wish to continue this analogy, I'd rather not contrast murder and copyright infringement too much. I just wanted to point out the absurdity of brushing off using an improper name for an offence as mere semantics.

Call it copyright infringement and rational debate will ensue. There's no one who can disagree with that term as it's 100% accurate. Call it theft and you'll get a screaming match about how it is or isn't theft.

Btw, could we also please dismantle the use of "consume" in regards to experiencing copyrighted content?

Oh man, I'd forgotten to what extent I had thrown in the towel on that one. It's a horribly inaccurate term, and IMO borderline offensive It's definitely in the same boat as "digital theft".

It has some logic to it. End-users are generally considered consumers (see other derived words such as "consumerism"), and consumers consume. The connotation of exhaustion is unfortunate, but I would argue that it's less innaccurate than theft when nothing is deprived (i.e. non-commercial infringement).

I hate the way I can be sued by someone copying my original code, just because they can afford to patent it and litigate. Open Source licences shouldn't be necessary here. I invented it, I deserve some credit even if I give it away to the world altruistically... without reams of GPL guff attached to it.

The Berne Convention laws gives you automatic copyright to anything you create with. If someone were to take your code and use it to create a patent based on your idea, you could hit them with copyright infringement for using your code without authorization. (Although, you could also argue that the code they used as an example for the patent is actually prior art which would be interesting for the Patent Office to decide)

I would still need to mount a legal defence, which I can't afford.

Those who imitate and seek to profit from the uniquely original work of others without permission or even acknowledgement of its attribution should be publicly shamed as part of a civilised creative culture. The genesis of ideas and the respect afforded to those who originate them should be sacrosanct.

This would also applie to the guy disrespectfully imitating and seeking to profit from Teller's shadow illusion:

However, I have been thinking that it would be convenient if people could download games to their profile on the upcoming Xbox 1080 and play them co-operatively at a friend's house when they visit, or lend them. For this to work, the friend would need to download the game into a cache without having to pay for it first. This is similar to how Sky+HD Box Office movies are recorded from Satellite and then (optionally) unlocked via the consumer's PIN number at which point their account is charged. This encourages you to obtain movies even if you may get invited out that evening as you only pay for what you end up seeing. Similarly, the 1080 could allow your friend to dowload a game without ever paying for it as the console would temporarily unlock it via your profile when you visited them with it on a memory card. The idea being that they would get hooked and so miss not being able to play the title whilst you were away that they would pay to unlock it as well.

Believe it or not, this used to be a feature of DS games. With some of the older DS games I could 'Share' thru device-to-device WiFi connection a sub-set, but otherwise complete, that would last as long as my friends kept their DS powered on.

However, I have been thinking that it would be convenient if people could download games to their profile on the upcoming Xbox 1080 and play them co-operatively at a friend's house when they visit, or lend them. For this to work, the friend would need to download the game into a cache without having to pay for it first. This is similar to how Sky+HD Box Office movies are recorded from Satellite and then (optionally) unlocked via the consumer's PIN number at which point their account is charged. This encourages you to obtain movies even if you may get invited out that evening as you only pay for what you end up seeing. Similarly, the 1080 could allow your friend to dowload a game without ever paying for it as the console would temporarily unlock it via your profile when you visited them with it on a memory card. The idea being that they would get hooked and so miss not being able to play the title whilst you were away that they would pay to unlock it as well.

Believe it or not, this used to be a feature of DS games. With some of the older DS games I could 'Share' thru device-to-device WiFi connection a sub-set, but otherwise complete, that would last as long as my friends kept their DS powered on.

The PSVita supports this as well, and (I think) a handful of PSP games too. I don't believe this feature has been removed from the DS family, or the 3DS.

Let me ask you a question: Is it illegal to make a copy of a cd I have bought from Amazon and give it to my brother or sister?

Quote:

Yes.

You're trying to "have your cake and eat it" - i.e. you retain the original CD after the gift to your sibling.

And I see nothing wrong in having my cake and eat it. Have I caused the rights holder any loss?

If I copy the cd and give the copy to my sister, I am a lawbreaker, but if I let her borrow the cd, I have likely caused the rights holder the same loss.

If you only let her borrow the CD you wouldn't have it to listen to yourself unless you were with her when she was playing it. The rights holders of the CD are hoping that this inconvenience may in time be enough to get you to purchase a second CD to listen to independently.

Apparently, Elton John buys multiple copies of the same CD for each of his houses and cars.

All the music in my iTunes library has been legitimately obtained. All 8.3 days worth.

Just try to avoid uploading stuff or selling burned CDs of it down at the market...

End-users are generally considered consumers (see other derived words such as "consumerism"), and consumers consume. The connotation of exhaustion is unfortunate, but I would argue that it's less innaccurate than theft when nothing is deprived (i.e. non-commercial infringement).

I'm opposing the base word, "consume", from which consumers and consumerism are derived. Also, exhaustion and deprivation aren't the parts I think are offensive; rather, it's the connotation that consumption is thoughtless, emotionless, conspicuous, and divorced from worldly concerns ("Is partaking of this in my financial/health/educational interests?"). I consume oxygen, wherein it becomes part of my metabolic existence; to suggest that I also consume a podcast implies that I had little choice in starting or stopping or even consciously evaluating (and possibly rejecting) the information within it. That sort of terminology is a bit dehumanizing. I know it's shorthand, but IMO it oversimplifies the flexibility and capability of the human brain. Our wielding of language should do the opposite of that.

Btw, could we also please dismantle the use of "consume" in regards to experiencing copyrighted content?

Oh man, I'd forgotten to what extent I had thrown in the towel on that one. It's a horribly inaccurate term, and IMO borderline offensive It's definitely in the same boat as "digital theft".

It has some logic to it. End-users are generally considered consumers (see other derived words such as "consumerism"), and consumers consume. The connotation of exhaustion is unfortunate, but I would argue that it's less innaccurate than theft when nothing is deprived (i.e. non-commercial infringement).

Not helping that when i hear politicians and corporate management go on about consumers, i get the feeling they envisions us as grazing cattle...

Btw, could we also please dismantle the use of "consume" in regards to experiencing copyrighted content?

Oh man, I'd forgotten to what extent I had thrown in the towel on that one. It's a horribly inaccurate term, and IMO borderline offensive It's definitely in the same boat as "digital theft".

It has some logic to it. End-users are generally considered consumers (see other derived words such as "consumerism"), and consumers consume. The connotation of exhaustion is unfortunate, but I would argue that it's less innaccurate than theft when nothing is deprived (i.e. non-commercial infringement).

Not helping that when i hear politicians and corporate management go on about consumers, i get the feeling they envisions us as grazing cattle...

I would argue that's definitely intentional. The public is seen as a cash cow to milk for all it's worth. If you _don't_ come to this conclusion, that's when I say there's something wrong with you and I'm not sure anything can be done to help you understand.

Let me ask you a question: Is it illegal to make a copy of a cd I have bought from Amazon and give it to my brother or sister?

Quote:

Yes.

You're trying to "have your cake and eat it" - i.e. you retain the original CD after the gift to your sibling.

And I see nothing wrong in having my cake and eat it. Have I caused the rights holder any loss?

If I copy the cd and give the copy to my sister, I am a lawbreaker, but if I let her borrow the cd, I have likely caused the rights holder the same loss.

If you only let her borrow the CD you wouldn't have it to listen to yourself unless you were with her when she was playing it. The rights holders of the CD are hoping that this inconvenience may in time be enough to get you to purchase a second CD to listen to independently.

Apparently, Elton John buys multiple copies of the same CD for each of his houses and cars.

All the music in my iTunes library has been legitimately obtained. All 8.3 days worth.

Just try to avoid uploading stuff or selling burned CDs of it down at the market...

This also varies from nation to nation. In Norway, as best i recall, one is allowed to share copies with close relatives and friends. This i think was put into law when double deck cassette players became common. i suspect that cassette tapes have a levy attached to compensate for such. Not sure if the same is true for blank CDs tho, and that could be troublesome.

Btw, could we also please dismantle the use of "consume" in regards to experiencing copyrighted content?

Oh man, I'd forgotten to what extent I had thrown in the towel on that one. It's a horribly inaccurate term, and IMO borderline offensive It's definitely in the same boat as "digital theft".

It has some logic to it. End-users are generally considered consumers (see other derived words such as "consumerism"), and consumers consume. The connotation of exhaustion is unfortunate, but I would argue that it's less innaccurate than theft when nothing is deprived (i.e. non-commercial infringement).

Not helping that when i hear politicians and corporate management go on about consumers, i get the feeling they envisions us as grazing cattle...

I would argue that's definitely intentional. The public is seen as a cash cow to milk for all it's worth. If you _don't_ come to this conclusion, that's when I say there's something wrong with you and I'm not sure anything can be done to help you understand.

If the problem with infringement is that it it's too broad, why not use commercial infringement to define the narrow sense that piracy sometime describes?

Because the law and the copyright maximalists have already redefined commercial copyright infringement down to activity including private noncommercial copying.

The ordinary meaning of commercial copying is that you must sell or otherwise gain from the distribution, but federal law now imposes criminal liability even when the copyright infringement is only done for private financial gain.

The theory is that you "gain" something when you copy instead of buying.

Does my downloading of a movie from the Internet somehow diminish the value of the original work?

To play devil's advocate: Yes. That's exactly the position of the movie studios. Because if people are getting the work for free, that diminishes the potential monetary value of the same work in a store.

It doesn't end all sales, it just reduces what people would be willing to pay.

And to some extent, online music sales, app sales, and even the pricing of e-books confirms this, because people appear to have an expectation that digital distribution should result in significantly lower prices.

"It doesn't end all sales, it just reduces what people would be willing to pay."Err, more like what people were being 'made' to pay.

End-users are generally considered consumers (see other derived words such as "consumerism"), and consumers consume. The connotation of exhaustion is unfortunate, but I would argue that it's less innaccurate than theft when nothing is deprived (i.e. non-commercial infringement).

I'm opposing the base word, "consume", from which consumers and consumerism are derived. Also, exhaustion and deprivation aren't the parts I think are offensive; rather, it's the connotation that consumption is thoughtless, emotionless, conspicuous, and divorced from worldly concerns ("Is partaking of this in my financial/health/educational interests?"). I consume oxygen, wherein it becomes part of my metabolic existence; to suggest that I also consume a podcast implies that I had little choice in starting or stopping or even consciously evaluating (and possibly rejecting) the information within it. That sort of terminology is a bit dehumanizing. I know it's shorthand, but IMO it oversimplifies the flexibility and capability of the human brain. Our wielding of language should do the opposite of that.

From a both a computational and food-centric point of view, "consuming" also implies using up. If i consume the doughnut, you are unable to. If a process consumes a message, that message is no longer around for any other process. Media is, by definition, not used up upon experiencing it. It is not consumed in the correct sense of the word. Hell, there's the concept of consumables in economic theory - they're items that are used up.

It all boils down to what society is willing to enforce, the masses be ignorant as much as those in power so what then?

IMO from musing on it (albeit poorly musing on it) it all revolves around trying to make a profit, if it dose not make a profit then it can do no harm.

First and foremost we need a copyright office that has some depth to it and that is able to look at cases to reasonable pass/fail things before it goes to court, and then share its hopefully un biased knowledge with the court to help the process along.

After that we need ground rules on what exactly reasonable use/infringement and criminal activity is.

The whole process should be founded upon if its trying to make a profit or not, from there a 2 or 4 step pass fail setup to weed out whats what.

Trying to make a profit if fail its in the clear, if pass it moves onto the 4 or 5 main points of fair use, failing that means its infringement, the last one would be the smell test for criminal activity where you have made a profit of 5K or 00.1 of the IPs worth.

Using distribution as the standard to pass/fail infrigmeent/criminal activity on leads to nothing but a quagmire.

Does my downloading of a movie from the Internet somehow diminish the value of the original work?

To play devil's advocate: Yes. That's exactly the position of the movie studios. Because if people are getting the work for free, that diminishes the potential monetary value of the same work in a store.

It doesn't end all sales, it just reduces what people would be willing to pay.

And to some extent, online music sales, app sales, and even the pricing of e-books confirms this, because people appear to have an expectation that digital distribution should result in significantly lower prices.

I think you have a flaw in your logic. People (or at least me - which is the only person I can speak for) don't expect lower prices on digital goods because there's a way to get them for free. No, I expect lower prices because it costs them less. There's no packaging to produce, no shipping to be done. Sure, servers and bandwidth have cost, but as you can see with Amazon S3 (etc) it's not very much at all. Also, because of DRM, there's a huge chance I could lose the right to play, watch, etc the file (this has happened to me before with the new, legit Napster) - so of course it should cost less.

Does my downloading of a movie from the Internet somehow diminish the value of the original work?And, if it does, what does that say about the value of the original work? And shouldn't its value be dictated by the market? Value is subject to supply and demand. Value is strictly in the eye of the beholder.

That brings me to the second problem,

If the company who produces the work doesn't value it appropriately to the market, should there be laws protecting their ability to overprice their products and prohibiting any competition in distribution?

Hmm, bringing supply/demand into the equation would limit the amounts given for successful copyright infringement plaintiff, but my problem deeply lies with what you mentioned earlier. Intrinsic value is different for everyone, and I have yet to see a concrete study on just how much money is lost from copyright infringement mainly because we have yet to be able to calculate how many sales were gained from piracy vs. lost sales.

IMO I think that piracy does indeed affect sales in a negative way, I.E. Someone liking something but refusing to purchase something based on principles or monetary reasons (see Witcher 2 PC sales) ,but until we can read peoples minds to see their reasoning on why the act, copyright infringement will always have a little muddled explanation.